Ex-Lowell school official guilty in slaying

Former Lowell administrator convicted of 2nd-degree murder of girlfriend, also a Lowell School Dept. leader

By Lisa Redmond, lredmond@lowellsun.com

Updated:
01/30/2013 07:24:51 AM EST

NASHUA -- Nearly five years after a Lowell school administrator was fatally stabbed in her Wilton, N.H., home, her common-law husband, Benjamin Duling, also a Lowell school administrator, was convicted Tuesday of second-degree murder in her death.

After seven hours of deliberations following a trial in Hillsborough County Superior Court, a jury found Duling, 40, guilty of fatally stabbing 35-year-old Shelly McGrade on April 18, 2008, in the kitchen of the couple's Wilton home.

McGrade, a Lowell native, worked in Lowell schools for at least 10 years. Duling was employed by the Lowell schools for about eight years. Both worked as student-database administrators. Neither of them had any direct contact with students.

Duling was fired by Lowell Schools once he was indicted in the case.

Duling will be sentenced in April. He faces from 20 years to life in prison.

After court ended, more than a dozen members of the McGrade family broke into applause.

"It's long overdue. It's something we've been waiting for for a long time," Michael Timothy McGrade, the victim's brother, told The Telegraph of Nashua.

The verdict brings justice and some closure to the family, he said.

"My sister was a wonderful person. She was cheated, but not as much as her children. Her children were cheated out of a lifetime of happiness with their mother," Michael Timothy McGrade said.

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Shelly McGrade had two children with Duling, a boy and girl who were 5 and 2, respectively, at the time of their mother's death. She also had two children from a previous marriage.

Lowell Schools Superintendent Jean Franco, who was assistant superintendent at the time of the slaying and knew both Duling and McGrade, expressed hope that a verdict in the case will help bring comfort to the family.

"I'm sure having closure to this particular incident is good for all concerned," she said.

During his closing argument, Assistant Attorney General Michael Lewis told the jury that Duling fatally stabbed his longtime girlfriend once in the neck and once in the back. He disputed the defense's argument that Duling was defending himself.

Defense attorney Mike Hulser argued that on the day of the killing, the couple began to fight because McGrade suspected her husband was having an affair with a male co-worker, according to published reports. Duling and the co-worker planned on leaving on a trip to London the next day, according to reports.

Hulser said Duling was defending himself when he stabbed McGrade after she attacked him, reports state. McGrade's body was found with a knife in her hand, but Lewis suggested Duling put the knife there before he went to a neighbor's house at about 7:45 p.m. to call the police, according to reports.

But Lewis told jurors that McGrade's 10-year-old son ran to the neighbor's house just after the killing and told them, "Daddy took a knife and stabbed mommy and there is blood everywhere."

A neighbor told police he found Duling in front of the couple's home, bleeding from the hand, hyperventilating and pounding his head against the ground as he cried out for "his babies." At one point he asked his neighbor to "please kill me," according to court documents.

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